By Cara Sievers

It’s true that Gail R. McCulloch, vice president of indirect sales at PointOne, has been known to horse around. When he’s not busy generating revenue in the company’s alternative channels, he’s out collecting accolades for his prize-winning horses.

Gail said he always wanted horses, but finally got into this hobby in about 1988. Today, he has about 10 horses — a combination of Paint Horses and Quarter Horses — that compete and show in events like team roping, tie-down roping, working cow horse and most other events that have to do with ranch-type activities. “We have worked very hard to find horses that have winning bloodlines with world champions and have ‘cow blood and cow sense’ bred into them,” Gail explained.

In fact, he has won many events at American Paint Horse shows, American Quarter Horse Shows, ropings and stock shows. One of his black and white stallions, Zip, is a four-time world champion and has earned about 500 American Paint Horse Association points — a very respectable showing in the horse world.

Gail can spend anywhere from 20 to 35 hours per week caring for the horses, with includes feeding and watering twice a day, and also doctoring, breeding, working with foals and riding. If he is showing the horses or competing in events with them, that consumes most of the weekend; but if not, and if it’s nice weather, sometimes he’ll ride up to six hours in one day.

Although Gail used to do a lot of the training, he said that these days, he gets them started and then sends them out for someone else to break them. “[I’m] getting too old to get bucked off,” he joked. “[But we] have a couple of the best trainers in the United States when it comes to training a horse for roping and competing.”

Gail admits this is an expensive hobby. He said that watching the horses develop and grow into something is worth it. “To take a horse and make him into the best horse for that year and have him win a world title is unbelievable,” said Gail. “In 2004, Zip won two world titles. We traveled over 50,000 miles and went to 40 shows that year. He ended up being the best roping horse in his age group of all the Paint Horses in the country. That is very exciting when all the hard work, money, time and energy pay off. Then to breed him to some of your mares and watch them have colts and to start working with them is very rewarding.”

Gail said it’s also nice spending time with his family members, who all enjoy riding the horses at the ranch Gail leases outside of Austin, Texas, where they live. And Gail feels lucky to always have his horses nearby. “Zip calls to me every morning. He always walks up to me and wants to be petted,” Gail said.

And even though Gail spends a lot of time at rodeos, listens to George Strait and collects old Western belt buckles, whether he is officially a cowboy or not is still up for debate. “My cowboy friends would say I’m not, and my city friends would say I am,” laughed Gail. “I guess I’m somewhere in between.”

First job: Working at a Boy Scout summer camp at age 14.

Words to live by: “You can not be everything to everybody, but you have to be everything you said you were.”

Favorite joke: A senior citizen was driving down the freeway when his car phone rang. Answering, he heard his wife’s voice urgently warning him, “There is a car going the wrong way on the interstate. Please be careful.” To which he replied, “It’s not just one car, it’s hundreds of them!”

Thoughts on telecom: “VoIP is the direction that everyone is going. Even the diehard TDM guys are finally embracing it.”

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